Quebec is in campaign mode. Prime Minister Jean Charest has called an election for Sept. 4 and thus asked the public to decide on several important issues. Commentators rushed to label this election the most important in a generation. In the last federal election in May 2011, the Quebecois gave a sweeping victory to the dying Jack Layton and the socialist New Democratic Party. Like African- Americans in the United States, the Quebecois tend to vote tactically and en bloc on the federal level in order to give themselves as much leverage as possible in at least one of the political parties. However, the Quebecois are also a minority group with their own territory, so debates within their society are sometimes brought into the political arena and decisions about them made at the ballot box.

The most important issue of the campaign is Jean Charest himself, that is, the 11 years that he and Liberal Party of Quebec have been in power and the inevitable exhaustion of energy and ideas that now diminishes the effectiveness of their government. A related issue is a universal problem that has taken on a unique form in the Quebecois context: Corruption. Americans who cross the border inevitably notice that roads in the Belle Province are not maintained at the same level as those back home.

Over the last few years, Quebecois society has turned its attention to the problem of corruption in the provincial construction industry. That corruption has existed for generations in Quebec, but only over the last five years or so has the public finally decided that the problem needs to be solved. Charest responded slowly to the new mood. While the letters-to-the-editor columns and internet sites were begging him to set up a government commission of enquiry, he took the attitude that it was best to wait and let the courts prosecute wrongdoers. The opposition parties in this election cycle are effectively attacking Charest for failing to move more decisively.

Quebec’s most pressing issue, however, is one that Americans can only scratch their heads or marvel at: the student strike. That college students who already pay the lowest tuition in North America could shut down their universities, take control of the street with nightly demonstrations, and dominate the media for six months over a proposed tuition increase can only be understood in the context of the Quebec’s never-ending Quiet Revolution. As important as the Sixties were in the United States, Quebec’s version of the period was more radical. The Sixties Generation in Quebec dramatically turned their back on the past and, unlike the American experience, the society never generated a conservative opposition to slow the forward movement. The activist spirit of the Quiet Revolution still motivates students in the Quebec.

The older generation is uncomfortable with the sporadic violence and socialist radicalism of the 2012 student strike phenomenon but has generally proven indulgent. The students have already forced the resignation of the Education Minister, and the strike leaders clearly want to bring down the Charest government. As such, they tend naturally to support the main opposition party, the nationalist PQ, the Parti Québécois. The leader of the Péquistes (in French, a member of this party), Pauline Marois, has sided with the students and even named one of the strike leaders as a party candidate.

At the beginning of the campaign the Parti Québécois is ahead in the polls with 33 percent support, the Liberals at 31 percent and a new third party, the pro-business Coalition for the Future of Quebec, at 21percent with about 15 percent undecided. If the Quebecois want a change of government, the person best prepared to take over the reins is the Péquiste leader Pauline Marois, who, if elected, would become the province’s first woman Prime Minister. In the last Parti Québécois government between 1994 and 2003, she held important ministerial portfolios and was named Vice Prime Minister.

The third political party in the race, the Coalition for the Future of Quebec, was founded last year by a wealthy businessman, François Legault. The Coalition has absorbed the deputies of a cultural conservative party that did well two elections back, but Legault is coming in as an economic conservative, though the word “conservative” is radioactive in Quebec and cannot be used in polite company. Legault was a minister in the last Péquiste government, so he is a nationalist but one who does not use the language of referendums or separatism.

Since the Quiet Revolution began in 1960, the Quebecois have switched political parties and governments every five to 10 years. If Charest wins this election it will be his fourth mandate and he could by law then hold power for sixteen years. The majority of the electorate feels that the continuation of Charest’s government would be unhealthy, but which direction do we choose to go: Another dose of nationalism and a possible referendum with the Parti Quebecois, or a technocratic government of nationalist leanings with the Coalition for the Future of Quebec that will take a slow go approach to pulling the plug on Canada? On the evening of Sept. 4, Quebec-watchers, and of course the Quebecois themselves—citizens of a mature democracy in a potential moment of redefinition— will learn the answer.

David Palmieri is an adjunct professor of Candian Studies and French at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh.